


Line of Fire

by mytimehaspassed



Series: I'll Hit the Earth With You [3]
Category: Shameless (US)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Mob, Drugs, F/M, M/M, Murder
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-20
Updated: 2013-02-20
Packaged: 2017-11-29 23:56:10
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death, Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,328
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/692991
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mytimehaspassed/pseuds/mytimehaspassed
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Mickey dies in the hospital from a gunshot wound to the chest.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Line of Fire

**LINE OF FIRE**  
SHAMELESS (US)  
Ian/Mickey; Ian/Mandy; Ian/Kash; Fiona/Steve  
 **WARNINGS** : Mafia!AU; murder; drugs  
 **NOTES** : This is a long time coming, but it's a sequel to [I'll Hit the Earth With You](http://andletmestand.livejournal.com/23015.html) and [We'll Collect These Lonely Parts](http://andletmestand.livejournal.com/23428.html).

  
**I.**

Mickey dies in the hospital from a gunshot wound to the chest.

Ian doesn’t hold his hand, doesn’t move in close, doesn’t kiss him one last time, his voice heavy and laden with unshed tears, something big and choking and unmovable in his throat, because Ian is in a black town car that’s slowly making its way back towards Chicago, pressed in between Kev and Frank, his face bruised and bloody.

Mickey stutters awake two, maybe three times, the machines screaming like sirens, and Ian doesn’t know, because he’s withering under the vice grip that Frank has on him, Frank’s nails scratching and scraping the soft skin on the underside of Ian’s arm. Ian doesn’t cry, can’t, while Mickey dies once and then again in a different state, in a hospital that Steve had dragged him to, out of pity or regret or maybe something else nestled deep inside of him, something that loved Fiona enough to defy her father.

Ian doesn’t cry, as Mickey dies on the operating room table, bloody and stupid and beautiful, dies once and then again, and then stays awake this time, blinded by the white coated doctors, blinded by the pain in his chest and the devastating loss of blood.

Ian doesn’t cry, even if the last memory he will have of Mickey will be the gunshot, Mickey’s smile, the fall to the tarmac and the blood that coated Ian’s shoes, Ian’s hands, the blood that never stopped spreading out from under Mickey’s pale skin.

Even if the last memory Ian will have will be of Mickey dying.

Ian doesn’t cry, but mostly because Frank would kill him if he did.

***

Steve had dropped Mickey off at the hospital in secret and then left the parking lot doing eighty, meeting up with Kev and Frank and Ian somewhere close to Decatur, his hands still flaking with Mickey’s blood.

He tells Frank that he watched Mickey die, tossed his body over the side of some bridge, piece by piece, weighed down with rocks and dirt inside of plastic grocery bags, and Frank smiles and tells him good job, good job, his wrist turning as he tilts a pocket-sized whiskey bottle into his mouth and swallows the lie.

Ian doesn’t feel sad, and he doesn’t feel like crying, leaning against the car with Kev’s hand on his shoulder, warm, strong, but he does feel the bile that slowly climbs its way up his esophagus tract, feels it fill his mouth and finally spill over, as he leans over to vomit somewhere near the front tire.

Kev makes this sound like, “Aw, kid,” patting Ian’s back in hard, slow claps, but Ian doesn’t say anything, doesn’t move, just wipes his mouth with the edge of his sleeve, his palms cupping his kneecaps, doesn’t make a sound, just breathes.

***

Fiona cries when he sees him. She hugs him tight and presses her face into his and asks him if he’s okay through great, sobbing heaves, and he nods against her shoulder and finally, finally, breaks down, clutching the sleeve of her sweater with a white knuckled grip.

Lip places a warm hand on his back, and he’s crying, too, his face wet and shiny, and then Debbie squeezes herself into their embrace, and then Carl, and somebody gives Liam to Fiona, and she settles him on her hip, his wet mouth finding Ian’s neck, and Fiona traces her fingers over Ian’s scars, the faint tickle of hypersensitive nerve endings, the dull clotting of mangled skin, and Ian closes his eyes and feels empty.

Frank makes a move towards his office, locking the door behind him with an audible click, rifling through his liquor cabinet for more alcohol, and Kev leaves to find V, and Steve stands there awkwardly like a seventh wheel, his dirty hands in his pockets, hiding the blood from Fiona, hiding the blood from the kids.

When somebody says something about Mickey, something benign, Lip moves to take Ian by the hand and drag him up the stairs to their room, where he pushes him on to the bed and locks the door and sits with him as Ian cries and cries and cries, fitting himself in the space between the wall and his pillow, his shoulders shaking, his hands curling into bloody, brown fists.

Lip tells him that he missed him, the same words that Ian has heard all the way through Missouri and Kansas, the same words Ian listened to at night on the road, when Mickey was beside him asleep, and Lip tells him that he’s sorry about Mickey, tells him that he’s sorry, he’s sorry, he’s so fucking sorry, and he moves to hug him, his lips on the back of Ian’s neck, his arms sliding around him, his tears wetting Ian’s skin.

Lip says, “I’m sorry,” and it’s warm against Ian’s skin, and it’s sharp and biting, full of guilt, though for what Ian doesn’t know.

Lip says, “I’m sorry,” over and over again, and suddenly, it’s tiring, it’s too much, and Ian just wants to be left alone, just wants to feel the pain inside of him without hearing the emotions in Lip’s voice, without feeling the sorrow of Fiona’s touch, and he draws in a deep breath, and it hurts, his lungs full and heavy in his chest.

Lip says, “I’m sorry,” and when Ian tells him to shut the fuck up, he does.

 

**II.**

Frank calls Ian into his office four days after he kills Mickey.

He sits Ian down and tells him to grab a drink because this is going to hurt like a bitch, swallowing down the last of his Jim Beam, his knuckles encased in silver. Ian shakily tilts a glass of whiskey to his mouth, watching Kev close the door behind him, his face twisted in regret, the sound of the turning lock loud in the office.

Ian doesn’t start crying until the fourth swing, and even then, he never makes a sound.

***

Frank gives Kash the job of cleaning Ian up, swaying and rocking towards the doorway, his fingers still gripping the bottle of Jim Beam. At first, Kash is afraid to touch him, his fingers hovering over Ian’s blood, his broken skin, until Ian rolls his eyes and says, “Fuck it,” pushing him away and walking towards the bathroom in Frank’s office.

Kash follows him and stands still in the doorway, watching Ian run a washcloth under the tap and bring it up to his face, the swollen eye, the split mouth, watches Ian watch Kash in the mirror. He looks hideous, tear streaks curving paths through the blood and snot, but Kash is watching him with a hungry look, and Ian closes his eyes and tells himself that he doesn’t care, that he shouldn’t care, reaching out to grip the sink tight with his hands.

He doesn’t say anything when Kash moves forward, his palm enveloping the small of Ian’s back, doesn’t say anything when Kash reaches around him to unbuckle his belt, unzip his jeans, doesn’t say anything when Kash lays a chaste, wet kiss on the back of Ian’s neck.

Kash fucks him gently enough that Ian loses himself in the feel of his hands, of his warm, open mouth.

 

**III.**

Lip tells him later that Frank only found out about Ian and Mickey because Steve had crumpled like a rag doll under Frank’s withering gaze.

Beneath the veneer of his alcoholism, Frank is intuitive about two things: (1) the business he’s in, the weight and feel of drugs and money and guns in his hands, who owes him favors, who needs a good ass kicking, the growers and pushers, the way silver wraps tight around his knuckles, the slick slide of blood on his face, the men who guard his children, the men who will die under his command, and (2) who is fucking who.

He had seen the way Mickey had put a hand on Ian’s shoulder, had seen the slow slide of Ian’s eyes going up and up and up Mickey’s body, had seen the way Kash had looked at them both, and he had put two and two together to get fucking four. He dragged Steve into his office one night and sat him down in the leather chair that faces his desk and had put a light hand on his shoulder and asked him, in a soft, gentle voice, if Mickey was fucking his son.

Steve never hesitated.

***

To be honest, though, Steve never knew that Frank would go this far.

 

**IV.**

In Ian’s dreams, Mickey dies again and again and again.

Sometimes, it’s on the tarmac.

Sometimes, it’s in Frank’s office, where Frank stands over both of them with a shiny nine mil in his hand, talking in words that Ian doesn’t understand, shaking the gun, taking long, slow pulls from a bottle of Jack, shaking his fist, spitting down at them, Kev peering over them with pity. Frank pulls the trigger and Ian closes his eyes and for one, long moment, he thinks he’s dead, before he wakes up in the cold, hard light of his bedroom and realizes that he has to face another day without Mickey.

***

Frank asks him in confidence if he’s ready to learn about the business yet, pulling him away from Fiona’s homemade pancakes and scrambled eggs and sausage patties to slide an arm around Ian’s shoulders, his head almost touching Ian’s, his breath smelling like a brewery. Ian watches Fiona watch him, her hand wrapped around a spatula, her wrist doubling its movements, stirring faster and faster until Steve lays a gentle palm on her knuckles and she slams the bowl down on the counter, pancake batter arcing across the stove.

Frank asks him if he’s ready, and Ian doesn’t smile when he says yes.

***

Sometimes, it’s in Colorado, in the McDonalds bathroom where Mickey fucked Ian against the sink, except when Mickey’s done panting against Ian’s back, his wet lips kissing and kissing Ian’s skin, Ian turns around and presses a gun to his head, Mickey’s wide eyes there, Mickey’s open mouth, presses it close and pulls the fucking trigger.

Mickey doesn’t say a word.

***

Frank has him doing shit work in the beginning, counting cash and moving bricks of heroin in sketchy white vans and meeting dealers on corners under half-lit street lamps to give them their cut.

Kash comes along with him sometimes, but mostly it’s Steve, who watches Ian with sad, lonely eyes and forgets not to say he’s sorry for everything that happened.

Steve steals cars, and steals them like he was born to, like he dreams of leather interiors and engines that rumble under his touch. He steals a few cars with Ian, who smiles and laughs and doesn’t care when they pass a cop car going ninety in a fifty-five once, who doesn’t do anything but grin as Steve makes a couple of tight, illegal U-turns and braves oncoming traffic to finally slide into one of Frank’s old shipping containers down by the docks, getting out to close the door behind them, listening over the sounds of his beating heart to the sirens until they fade away.

He had looked at Ian’s face then, in the slit of light that was coming through the container door, Ian’s wide smile, and told him that Fiona was going to kill him, and Ian had laughed, and then Steve had swallowed once and said, “I’m lying to her,” his voice heavy in the dark of the container.

Ian had frowned and pushed himself up so he was standing, his dirty shoes fucking up the seat, his hands on the top of the windshield. His fingers press against the glass, dirtying it with his fingerprints, enough to make Steve wince, and he had said, “What?” and it was his Frank voice, the voice that he uses to scare the shit out of people who mistake him for someone other than a Gallagher.

“My name isn’t Steve,” Steve had said, and Ian had narrowed his eyes. “And, actually, I’m not really a bodyguard.” The laugh he gave might have been self-deprecating, but Ian had jumped over the car door and started toward Steve, pressuring him into backing up a little bit, against the container door, and Ian had never known that being that powerful could feel that good.

“But I love her,” Steve whispered in the dark, and Ian had stopped, his shoes squeaking on the floor. “I love her so much and I’m afraid what Frank might do if he found out that I wasn’t who I said I was. I mean, he almost killed you when he found out about you and Mickey.”

He did kill me, Ian didn’t say.

“I’ve been running for so long and I don’t want to have to run away from her,” Steve had said, and the light that filtered through the container glittered with dust. “I don’t want to leave.”

Ian had watched him watch Ian and Ian had taken a deep breath and said, “Then I guess we have to make sure that Frank doesn’t find out.”

Steve’s smile had wavered between them.

 

**V.**

On Mickey’s birthday, Frank hires Mandy to give him a cheer-up fuck.

It would be laughable if Ian didn’t let Mandy cry on his shoulder the whole night, her lipstick smearing all over his collarbone. Ian had tangled his fingers in her hair and Mandy had kissed him on the mouth, and Ian had told her that he had loved Mickey, and Mandy had told him that she had, too, and they had lain in his bed for an hour, staring at the plastic glow-in-the-dark stars that Carl had stuck up there sometime in his astronomy phase, and Mandy had slid a hand between Ian’s pants and Ian’s skin, and Ian had been too tired to move away or tell her no.

She had pushed against him in slow, gentle waves, and Ian had whispered Mickey’s name somewhere between thrusts, and Mandy didn’t say anything, her mouth slick on his neck.

***

Frank had clapped Ian on the shoulder when Mandy slipped out the next morning, her hair big and messy, her mascara climbing down her cheeks.

Ian felt nothing if not numb.

 

**VI.**

What’s funny is: Ian finds out that Mickey is still alive through one of Frank’s own men.

Frank had gone to Atlantic City to drunkenly gamble away most of his retirement money or to meet up with one of the nice, organized Italian families out there or to kill someone and bury his body in the Pine Barrens or maybe all three, and had left Kev in charge of not only the Alibi Room, where Frank conducted a lot of his backroom, shady dealings, but also most, if not all, of the operations.

Kev had sat in Frank’s chair and smoked one of Frank’s coveted Cubans and poured himself a glass of whiskey and had pointed at Lip and Ian with his index finger and made them both laugh with a horrible Godfather impression. He had given them the rundown of that week’s jobs, dividing up the work between them, his feet dangling off the desk.

Lip had balked at most of it, and Kev had told him to quit his whining, and Ian had shook his head, and one of the boys outside the door had knocked, and Kev had gone around the desk to answer it, and the boy who stood outside, twenty, maybe twenty-one, had been bloodless and profusely sweating, and Kev had told him to come inside before he dropped down dead, and the boy, who had hair as red as Ian’s, couldn’t look at any of them when he told them that there had been a problem.

One of the dealers down by the Alibi had caught his death from two slugs to the back of the head, double-tap, all professional-like. He had been dealing coke, which should have been suspicious in its own right, because most of the Alibi crowd only bought weed and crack and the occasional spoonful of heroin. He had money in his pocket, and even more money in the drugs he was carrying, and nobody had seen anything.

Kev had drawn in a long, shuttered breath and said, “Fuck.”

***

Kev sends Lip and Ian underground, just in case. And the rest of the kids, too, Fiona narrowing her eyes and barking out insults and refusing to pack anything more than an overnight bag when Kev tells her that she has to leave the house. Frank doesn’t get a call, not yet, but only because Kev is afraid what Frank will do if he knew that someone was killed on Kev’s watch, and only because V has sided with Fiona on this one, placing a hand on her cocked hip and telling him that he was acting like a pussy.

They go to one of the old houses on what Frank calls the mafia underground railroad, though the couple that greets the Gallaghers with smiles and warm, homemade chocolate chip cookies are less interested in helping their poor, tired souls and more scared of what Frank could do to their three sons, who just happened to buy a big score from Frank last July with the intention of making it rich, and had yet to pay him their fair share of the push, plus interest.

Frank has a code for these sort of things, and the old man and woman, who look slightly overwhelmed by the amount of swearing that Carl peppers them with, by Liam’s cries, by Debbie’s arched eyebrows and pre-teen gait, are paying their dues.

***

Lip and Ian slip out in the middle of the night to trek their way back to the city, bumming rides from truck drivers who stare longingly at Ian’s slim build. They case the Alibi, and the police tape around the back where the dealer got shot, and they come up with nothing substantial, which is mostly what Lip expected, and had told Ian, his voice soft and honest, almost like he admired the guy, whoever he was.

“Anyone that wants to fuck up Frank’s operations is a dead man,” Ian says, his voice low in the dark of the bar, and Lip hums his agreement.

Frank is a giant asshole and deserves to die in a rum-drenched gutter in a cascade of bullets, but they both know that there is no one on earth that could get close enough to kill him, his children included.

***

When nothing else happens for a week, Kev sends the kids back home and tells Frank nothing about the paranoid escape to the country, but does tell him about the dead dealer in the back of the Alibi, blaming it on an unhappy customer or something else ridiculous and simple. Frank shrugs and tells Kev to give his family some money for the burial, but to otherwise forget about it, swallowing down Long Islands like it’s his job.

 

**VII.**

The next dealer that eats it is one of Frank’s own prodigies, a kid who grew up on the Southside and made his way up the ranks, until he was handling his own set of operations, reporting straight to Frank. Frank doesn’t cry, but makes some bloated, alcoholic remark about loving him like a son, and Lip and Ian both roll their eyes.

It was the same double-tap to the back of the head, but, this time, the money from the dealer’s sale was gone, most likely pocketed by the killer or one of the roaming homeless men in the alley that the dealer was found in. Lip and Ian are one of the first on the scene, only because Kev had let them come, and they both look at the blood, the bruises on the body, and come to the same conclusion.

***

“It was a hit,” Lip says in Frank’s office, standing in front of his desk, with his palms outstretched on the wood. “This was professional.”

Frank blows smoke around the cigarette in his mouth and makes a face. “Of course I know it was a hit. Do you think I’m stupid?”

Ian makes a sound that is not quite, but almost, a laugh. Frank glares at him.

“The other one, too,” Ian says, and Frank shrugs. “Someone is obviously trying to put you out of business, Frank.”

Frank sighs and pulls the cigarette from his lips, scissoring the stick with two of his fingers. “Let me tell you something, kid,” he says, pointing the cigarette at Ian. “Someone is always trying to put me out of business. That’s the nature of this game.”

“So what are we going to do?” Lip says, and his voice is biting.

Frank smiles. “We’re going to do what we always do.”

***

Frank’s idea of cleaning up a mess is to throw dynamite at it.

He rounds up Kev and Steve and Kash and some of the other boys and tells them to break as many appendages as they have to to get some answers. As far as Lip or Ian can tell, it’s turning the back room of the Alibi into some kind of war zone, but not doing much else, which just pisses Frank off even more, goading him into breaking more legs and arms and fingers and toes in the hunt for some kind of information about this mysterious hit man.

Ultimately, Kev comes back to Frank empty-handed and Frank sits and sighs and opens a new bottle of scotch, lighting a second cigarette with the one already in his mouth.

 

**VIII.**

Liam’s bodyguard is found dead in Frank’s office, blood seeping down the side of his face, and this is when Frank starts to really get scared. He gets Steve to peel the large, hulking mass of body out of Frank’s chair, and anxiously paces back and forth in front of his desk, the bottle in his hand becoming lighter with each pass of the door.

Fiona hasn’t let go of Liam since they found the body, and Lip is strung tight beside Carl and Debbie, his fists curling in and then out again, and Frank had hired a temporary bodyguard after Ian had come home without Mickey, and the guy narrows his eyes when Ian makes a move towards the door, crossing one meaty arm over the other.

There are no witnesses and even less evidence, and Frank slides a hand down his face in exasperation and can’t think past the buzz of alcohol in his blood, and Kev hovers uncertainly somewhere between staying and fighting this invisible force or getting the fuck out of there, V clinging to his wrist.

***

Carl’s guard is next.

Carl finds him in his bathtub with shattered kneecaps and bloody handprints climbing up the walls, and this was messy and uncouth, and Fiona can’t stop shaking when Carl comes to her, and she doesn’t give Frank an ultimatum, but she does tell him that they’re leaving, all of them, and Frank can stay here all he likes in this house and fix his own fucking mess, but the kids are not risking their lives for some fucking drunk mafia don.

Frank nods once and lets her go.

***

Steve takes Lip and Ian, and they’re riding recklessly down the highway in a stolen car when Steve lets it slip that he never threw Mickey in the river.

Ian is in the passenger seat and it takes one minute, two, before he can breathe again, and he says, “What?” and it’s swollen and angry in the space of the car.

Steve’s hands are restless on the steering wheel, but he doesn’t look at Ian, can’t, and Lip slides a hand over Ian’s shoulder from the back, warm, steady. “I didn’t kill him,” he says, and shakes his head, the car swerving once past the center line. Another car honks their horn somewhere behind them and Ian’s hand is white on the door handle, his knuckles bloodless and jagged.

“What?” Ian says again, and Lip mutters a fuck behind him.

“When Frank left, I took him to the hospital. I don’t know if he’s still alive, but I left him there so he could have a chance.”

Ian is breathing too fast now, almost hyperventilating, and Lip’s hand digs deeper into his shoulder, but Ian can’t feel it, can’t even hear Lip call his name, and he closes his eyes and then opens them again, and he’s not crying, but he feels like letting go of everything, like screaming, and Steve is taking his eyes off the road too long to watch Ian’s face, and he swerves over the center line again, and Ian sees it before he does, the truck that’s coming up too fast, and he goes to take the wheel, to steady it, but he jerks too hard, and then they’re falling, curving through the next lane and onto the embankment, the car rumbling over the grass and rocks, too fast, and Steve makes a little noise of surprise and Ian has just enough time to take in a deep breath before they hit the water.

***

They make it out.

Gallaghers are nothing if not resourceful, and Lip pulls Steve out of the water and onto the shore, dripping wet and struggling for gulps of air, and does everything short of mouth-to-mouth before Steve can breathe again, and Steve is looking at Ian with wet, haunted eyes, and Ian gets up and walks over and hits him as hard as he can.

Steve coughs once and says, “I guess I deserve that.”

 

**IV.**

Lip makes the connection before Ian does.

“It’s Mickey,” he whispers, as Ian lays awake that night in the hotel room Fiona rented for them, all cooped up in one room because Fiona wasn’t about to let them out of her sight long enough to end up dead.

Ian was shirtless, and his scars from the fire stood out in the room’s low light, pale and jagged, puzzle pieces of damaged skin grafted onto damaged skin. He thinks about it for a second and then lets out a loud exhale. “He’s the only one who knows the ins and outs of the house,” he says. “He’s the only one who knows who’s working when.”

“And he knows who Frank goes to when he’s scared,” Lip says.

Ian nods, and Lip is next to him on the bed they’re sharing with Carl, and his shoulder brushes against Ian’s shoulder. “He can tear the whole fucking business apart,” Ian says.

Lip turns his face towards Ian, his lips just barely touching Ian’s neck. “And he can kill everyone,” he whispers, and Ian feels a shiver travel up his spine.

***

It’s Steve’s idea to call him.

Mickey worked with a burner most of the time, like all the other lackeys Frank has set up to work in his business, but he kept a private cell phone, one that only Ian knew the number to. He calls it once and there’s no answer, calls it again and someone picks up, but doesn’t say anything, and Ian says, “Mickey?” his voice a breathless exhale of hope and something else, something much bigger than him.

Mickey hangs up.

Ian calls it again, but it goes straight to voicemail, and Ian thinks of saying something, anything, but he begins to cry instead.

 

**X.**

Frank gets the call as Steve is taking Lip and Ian out to get breakfast, Fiona having long since gotten over room service, especially considering that Carl has taken to running up and down the halls stealing newspapers, prompting some very nasty threats from management, with the suggestion that maybe they wouldn’t like what the cooks were putting in the food.

Someone had called Frank about the killings, Frank had said to Steve on the phone, and he was somewhere in the Alibi, Steve knew because there was raucous laughter in the background and the soft clinking of glasses, and Steve looked at his watch, but couldn’t feel so unsurprised.

“He said he would kill the kids if I didn’t meet him,” Frank was saying, and Steve makes a pained face and says something along the lines of “no, don’t go.”

Lip raises his eyebrow at Steve in the rearview, and Steve makes a jerk-off motion with his hand and Lip turns to Ian and says, “Frank.”

Ian rises up and says, “Tell him that we’ll meet him instead.”

Steve shakes his head in exaggerated movements, and Ian takes the gun out of Steve’s hip holster and points it to his head.

Lip shouts Ian’s name, but Ian is steady, pressing the gun to Steve’s temple, watching his eyes in the rearview. “Tell him we’ll meet him instead,” he says again, and Steve nods once and relates the message to Frank.

***

Steve doesn’t say Ian or Lip are coming, which is probably why Frank vehemently agrees, swallowing the rest of his beer and tapping the bar for another.

***

Mickey is alone and waiting, a hoodie pulled up to hide his face, the bulge of a gun tucked into his pants. Ian’s eyes swell when he sees him, and he almost starts crying there, can feel his face grow hot, can feel the heaviness in his chest, but he takes a deep breath and tells Steve and Lip to wait for him by the car and he gets out and Mickey sees him immediately, and he makes an aborted movement to leave, but stops when Ian calls his name.

“Mickey,” Ian says, and it’s ragged, harsh, in the air between them.

“I have nothing to say to you, Gallagher,” Mickey says, and takes the gun out of his pants, waves it between them. “Tell your father that we have some business to finish.”

“Mickey,” Ian says again, and this time he does start crying. Mickey looks pale, looks like he’s been running for a really long time, and Ian thinks he probably has been, and then he’s suddenly angry, wiping his face with the back of hand. “Why didn’t you come to me first? Why didn’t you tell me you were still alive?”

Mickey stops then, looking up at him, and he looks confused, surprised.

“I thought you died, you asshole,” Ian says, crying again. “I thought that you had died and I didn’t know how to live with myself for weeks. Why the fuck didn’t you come to me?”

Mickey’s eyes shine in the sunlight. “I thought you knew,” he says, and his voice is soft between them. “I thought you knew that Steve had taken me to the hospital and left me there. I thought you didn’t want to be around me anymore.”

Ian takes a step forward, his legs shaking beneath him, and then another and another until he reaches Mickey, his hands grasping for any part of him, his shirt, his hair, his arms. “I would never,” he sobs, and Mickey pulls him close, and then they’re kissing, and Ian finally feels like everything is right again, like everything is back to what it should be, and his heart pounds and pounds in his chest and Mickey starts crying, too, and they’re a mess here, completely fucked.

“I’m sorry,” Ian says, but for what, he doesn’t know, and Mickey kisses him so hard that both of their mouths start to bleed.

***

It’s not the same.

But they both knew it wouldn’t be.

***

Four weeks later, Frank dies on a bar stool in the Alibi, one hand on the glass of beer Kev had poured for him, the other one pressed tight to the liver that had finally given in.  



End file.
